Elegy for Alexis

An elegy by SOFIE KITTS.

My love will be gone for the

next forever years.

This is an elegy for the sun at quarter to nine on a crisp Friday morning.
This is an elegy for the coffee with the burnt beans. The two trails of Marlboro smoke intertwining, weaving into a hazy braid above our bowed heads.
This is my elegy for Alexis.
For her who dragged me kicking from myself, from my meandering thoughts when they wandered too close to the cliff edge.
For Alexis the Valkyrie, fierce in her puffy, swollen eyes and bomber jacket.
For Alexis who never explained the pockets stuffed with notes.
For Alexis who could never explain how she paid our bills, paid for the milk in our tea, for the food keeping her wretched lover alive.
For Alexis who cried when she got her first tattoo; the skull of a unicorn on the inside of her thigh. I had often gazed into its cavernous eye sockets, kissed its spiralling horn and caressed its protruding teeth. If Alexis accepted it as part of her body, then so would I.
For Alexis, the unicorn skull represented the “deconstruction of childhood fantasy, myth and falsehood”. For me, it represented everything she wanted the world to believe about her. Everything I could see past.
For Alexis, the rationalist, the secularist, the logician who drifted like a kite with closed eyes to the sound of church choirs,
for Alexis who turned red when I caught her at peace.